Only one of the many impacted trees from the prior weekend’s storm is shown.
A storm caused downed trees, significant power outages and localized flooding in Highland County on Friday, Sept. 27.
“As you are probably aware, we were following the remnants of Hurricane Helene as it moved up through Georgia then across the southern Appalachians and then eventually passed across Kentucky during the afternoon and evening of Friday,” said Scott Hickman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wilmington, Ohio. “That brought an increase in the pressure gradient, and there was still a very strong wind field associated with it, so with the accompanying rain, we ended up getting high wind damage and also flooding in our area.”
Hickman said that the worst of the local conditions were in Ross, Pike and Scioto counties, especially in the Portsmouth area.
Dave Bushelman, the director of the Highland County Emergency Management Agency, said the biggest problems in Highland County were power outages and downed trees from high winds.
“We received no calls for assistance, but it was well-needed rain,” he said. “We could have done without the high winds, but the rain was very much needed.”
“Specifically for Highland, we got just a generalized report from the afternoon hours saying trees and power lines were down across the county,” said Hickman.
Hickman said the highest known gusts with the system occurred in Clinton County with reported gusts of 67 miles per hour at 3:53 p.m. “We had a period of sustained winds of 40 to 45 miles per hour,” he said.
“If we were getting that across the area with gusts up to 60 miles per hour, that’s going to cause some issues, and that’s what it did,” said Hickman. “We’ve had lots of trees and power lines down with power outages from the northern Kentucky area all the way up into Dayton and south of Columbus.”
Hickman said a 24-hour rainfall amount from Friday into Saturday showed anywhere from an inch and a half to three and a half inches of rain over Highland County with the highest in the eastern part of the county.
“It had a tremendous wind field still with it,” said Hickman. “What was interesting too is having east and northeast winds gusting that strong.”
Reach John Hackley at 937-402-2571.
